SUNY Ulster

September 18, 2018

Mindy Kole
Associate Dean of Adult Learning

CC BY

How can OER foster communication and collaboration across campus?

OER can foster communication and collaboration across campus by bringing educators from a variety of disciplines together to share their expertise to revise or create course materials.  One of my personal goals at SUNY Ulster is to use OER materials for BUS 205, Marketing Principles & Practices, a course I will teach in the spring term.  Teaching marketing now requires thorough discussion of the roles of social media, mobile, video, SEO, etc. in the tactical portions of the course.  Collaborating with colleagues from communications and web development, as two examples, to include their expertise in the customization of materials (or the creation of new materials), would clearly benefit the quality and helps meet one OER Evaluation Criteria, specifically, “is the content accurate based on both your expert knowledge and through external sources?”

Kim Wozencraft
Adjunct Instructor, English Department

CC0

Write the definition of OER in your own words, one strength, and one weakness as you see it.

One of the reasons I love libraries is because they exist in service of sharing of knowledge and they seek to do this freely and openly. They offer the wealth of knowledge without charging a fee. They don’t put up pay walls that prevent people of modest means, or even people of little-to-no means, from accessing resources that can open minds and enrich lives.

Open educational resources are similar to libraries. OERs offer open access to knowledge without regard for an individual’s ability to pay. OERs are educational materials of all types (documents, books, videos, exercises, visual arts, online courses) that are either not copyrighted all, are out of copyright, or have been created under the Creative Commons system that allows various levels of sharing the material. Creative Commons licenses encourage the sharing of knowledge, the building of knowledge, and the dissemination of resources throughout the world. OERs are one manifestation of the phrase, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Everyone has the opportunity to contribute to, and benefit from, OER content.

One weakness I have discovered thus far in exploring OER content is that some material may not be up to par. This may be the result of rushed endeavors to create material and a lack of copyediting or proofreading in some of the resources I have examined. I’ve learned that it is important to thoroughly and carefully read all material before I use it in a course.

Even with that, most of the material I’ve looked at is written as well as the standard textbooks that are in use today, and I am very eager to explore OERs for future use. I’ve already started using OERs in two of my courses and I look forward to expanding my OER know-how so that I never again have to list an expensive textbook as a requirement for a course I teach.